Drifting on the occasion of April 30

I love them, like I love my loved ones, and I always take them as an example to follow throughout my life.

To me, Mr. Nguyen Chi Trung is a shining example of patriotism, love of the people, daring to sacrifice for the Fatherland, and absolute purity throughout his life. Just like that, Mr. Trung was a hero in my heart.

With the poet Thu Bon, when I think of him, I laugh and want to cry at the same time. Because he is a full-fledged soldier-poet, a man who dares to live with kindness, with a will to live, with compassion and with the wonderful instincts of an upright man who loves women wholeheartedly. . Knowing how to love women to the fullest, isn’t that a quality that any man admires, any woman is also very easy to fall in love with?

As for Mr. Bay Du – a senior leader of mine during the war against the US, his vision, his simple way of living a bit hidden, the feats he had done in silence and very few people knew, had brought the he became an idol that I admired, even though I was never close to him. But Mr. Bay Du knows him very well, and he likes me, I know that. He appreciates it but does not say it, only shows it through his behavior at times when I have the most difficulties. That’s when my poem “A soldier talks about his generation” in 1974 was beaten up, up and down the field. Fortunately, at that time I was living and working as a journalist in the Military Department, but if I was in the TWC Cultural Department, it would be difficult for me to live. Mr. Bay Du invited me to his small thatched house in the middle of the forest, and had a sincere conversation with me about…my poetry. That’s what surprised me. I know that Mr. Bay Du is a professional revolutionary, a political professional, but not a poet, and we talked with both frankness and sincerity. I do not accept any “flaws” in the draft of my first book of poems, “Footprints Through the Prairie”, but I thank Mr. Bay Du for his sincere affection for a young soldier, a soldier. My childhood is still unknown to many people like me.

When I returned to Saigon after April 30, 1975, I once met a motorbike driver who was a Northern migrant by the Old Market, was able to sit and drink beer with him, and he told me that he was related to Phan Thi Quyen – his wife. Heroic martyr Nguyen Van Troi, I feel like meeting all the people from the North who migrated to the South in 1954, listening to their feelings, sympathizing with their nostalgia for their homeland in the North, where they passed away 21 years ago. Is there any nation like ours, which has been separated and reunited many times, has gone through many “strawberries” but has inconsolable memories of its ancestors’ homeland. Such a people cannot help but be united, cannot help but live in peace.

It is possible that in some part of the world, there are ethnic groups that have been separated for more than 60 years and more, but not in Vietnam. Separating 21 years from our people is too long. No one expected such a painful separation.

If we understand April 30, 1975 as the day to realize the unification aspiration of a nation, then we will be more comfortable with many difficulties ahead. But the path that the Vietnamese nation has walked, is going and will go on, is still the path of national unity and harmony.

And I remember, the time in the forest when I was able to talk intimately with Mr. Bay Du, Mr. Bay had a moment of contemplation when he said to me: “Even if it takes generations to see our nation really in harmony, We are still waiting patiently.”

In those years, I was a war correspondent in the Central Military Department, and specialized in writing about national reconciliation and harmony for the Voice of Vietnam and Liberation Radio. I listen to Mr. Bay Du’s sentiments, and I understand that the road to true national harmony is still far away and full of difficulties, but we choose that path, and follow it faithfully.

The April days of any year after 1975 make me have moments of recollection. Sometimes I feel like a water hyacinth floating on Vam Co Dong river, a small water hyacinth, but I always know my brothers, who are close to me, and the serenity when I flow with the river. .

Reunification season is always the most emotional season for me, a person who had to leave his parents to cross the Truong Son and live for 5 years in the Southern battlefield. So many memories with friends and teammates. There was a close friend of mine in the Eastern war zone, after his liberation, he and his family crossed the border to settle in Australia. But he never forgets his friends back home, forgets the years we spent together. Recently, my friend called me and said, “The years we spent in the Eastern Forest were the best years of my life.” I cried when I heard him say that. Those were the most beautiful years of our youth, “Though life will be ten thousand times better in the future” (Poetry of Che Lan Vien). We have lived, sacrificed and suffered together with our people and our country.

The season of Unity was for us the highest aspiration during the war years.

But these April 2021, while the covid-19 epidemic has not stopped spreading around the world, when the death toll from the disease has been higher than the death toll in a war, by chance I read the article written like rubbing salt of a young Vietnamese born in 1982 living and working in the US. He talked about the unbearable feeling when a strange white woman suddenly cursed and spit in his face right at an airport in the US in March 2020. It’s just because he is of Asian descent, a Vietnamese born in the US and over the years has worked hard for America, where he thinks his “American dream” is coming true. “But I was wrong to think so.” Chances are, just because he is a young man of Vietnamese origin, though full of enthusiasm and not lacking in talent.

I was silent for a long time thinking of my compatriots, who were not only born in war, but also born in peace, raised in peace, even in a country far from Vietnam. halfway around the world. Ethnic origin is something no one can deny. But Vietnamese people, wherever they are, doing any small honest labor, are also people who are not easy for anyone to bully and discriminate against them. Vietnamese people are always peaceful, even willing to endure, always “nine out of ten” in many relationships with outsiders, but flowing deep in their veins is the Vietnamese blood of Tran Hung Dao, of Nguyen Trai, by Quang Trung Nguyen Hue. They are naturally indomitable, and even more naturally peaceful.

There are things left by history that we must always know how to preserve. But there are also things that we need to change, especially things that Vietnamese people need to change when looking at each other. On April 30, 1975, right at the Independence Palace, Viet Cong General Tran Van Tra – a fierce compatriot of mine – told General Duong Van Minh when he was and will no longer be the President of the Republic of Vietnam. : “We Vietnamese have neither won nor lost in this war. The loser is America, and our people as a people must live in peace and national harmony.”

That is the belief of our entire Vietnamese people.

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